Paramount Planning an Animated ‘Transformers’ Prequel

Long after our corpses have turned to dust, they will still be making Transformers movies. The cities will fall and the tides will rise to the soundtrack of wisecracking robots turning into cars. These things will outlive humanity and will ultimately be the number one choice of entertainment for the sentient A.I. that will supplant us. Transformers 57 will be the most popular film in the underground bunkers that will house the future citizenry of Earth.

In other news, two new writers have joined the “writer‘s room” that has been tasked with plotting future movies, one of which may be an animated prequel set entirely on Cybertron. Oh, joy. Oh, bliss.

The news comes to us from Deadline, who report that Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari (uncredited writers on Marvel’s Ant-Man) have joined the society of scribes tasked with shepherding this franchise forward. That room is being headed up by Akiva Goldsman, who is either a multi-faceted Oscar-winner or an uber-hack depending on what day of the week it is. His minions are a varied bunch, including The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, genre veteran Zak Penn, and LOST survivor Jeff Pinkner. As mean as we’re being to this entire awful franchise (and all four live action Transformers movies are nightmarish), it’s hard to get angry at these guys for turning down a gig.

Anyway, the most interesting sliver of news to come out of Deadline’s report is not that this think tank is putting their heads together to have Transformers 5 ready for director Michael Bay, who will return to his indentured slavery after wrapping his Benghazi drama 13 Hours. The really interesting news is that this group may be working on a prequel tale called Transformers One, which will take place entirely on Cybertron and chronicle the early days of the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. What’s interesting about this is that this is an animated movie. There would be no humans in the entire screenplay, just CGI robots punching other CGI robots. Are audiences ready for a Transformers movie that doesn’t feature an affable human surrogate to run away from exploding buildings? Of course they are. Transformers movies will never stop.

Honestly, a team of writers is probably necessary to sort through the Transformers mythology and make sense of the the previous films. Maybe, just maybe, these guys can undo the nonsense of the past four movies and pave the way for something that is pretty good! Maybe. If we’re going to live with these movies for the foreseeable future, we might as well try optimism.